


Playing Pretend

by Dancing_Hen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Bottom James Potter, But Lily Also, But Sirius Sees Her As A Threat, Fluff, Honeydukes, Implied Sexual Content, James Probably Is Too, James Wants Sirius, Kinda, Light Angst, Lily Is Lovely, Longing, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Possibly Unrequited Love, Rough Kissing, Short & Sweet, Sirius Wants James, Top Sirius Black, sirius is bi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 09:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12554340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancing_Hen/pseuds/Dancing_Hen
Summary: Sirius plays pretend. James does too.A one-shot exploring Sirius never really having a real, long term relationship and why that could have been. Or, I suppose, put simply, Sirius wants his best-friend and gets all messed up.Grab a cuppa and come enjoy!





	Playing Pretend

He doesn’t taste like them. He tastes like pumpkin juice and Honeydukes chocolate, not cherry lip gloss. His lips are firm and demanding, his noises of desire warm against Sirius’ tongue. Not giggles issuing from pouty, sticky lips. Hard, insistent…purely James.

They don’t know what James is like at three in the morning, when he can’t sleep, when he’s tossing and turning, they don’t get to have him climb into their bed, eyes fervent and hands bold.

When he demands kisses, with caressing hands and whispered pleas, they aren’t the ones to succumb to such blatant want. They don’t get to kiss him, to taste minty toothpaste and feel the flick and suck of his tongue.

Sirius feels pleased that only he knows what James is like when he’s on his back, shirt twisted up around his ribs, stomach rising and sinking in time with his breathing, pyjama pants low on his hips and face screwed up in pleasure. They don’t get to rut against him, to move against his body and claim his swollen lips over and over again.

And when he cries out softly, biting into Sirius’ shoulder, fingers twisted in the sheets and gripping mindlessly through the pleasure, they don’t know what it’s like to feel his body undulate and tremble with the culmination of lust. They don’t get to hear his breathless sounds, caught high in his throat, as he struggles to regain his senses afterwards.

They think they get it, they might even image what James is like in bed, in private. Loud or quiet. Dirty or coy.

Sirius has heard tittering fifth years discussing James before, the details they fantasized about, the way he might hold them down and kiss them breathless, or tell them they’re beautiful and perfect.

It makes him smirk. Because he _knows._ He knows it all.

He’s the one who holds James down; back pressed to the door of the dormitory, the mattress, the overstuffed armchair in the common room, anywhere that’s convenient and empty of witnesses, and he knows that James arches into his body, pressing up against him, wanting more. Always needing more.

He knows James likes lazy kisses. The kind where lips move slowly and tongues don’t rush to take, but rather they cajole and seduce. The warm kisses that make your toes tingle and your heart race. He also likes the rough ones, the abrupt kisses that end with swollen lips and aching tongues.

They see James at dinner and they batter their eyelashes his way, giggling, gagging over him, and it amuses Sirius. He’s the one to make James laugh until his sides hurt, the one to see how beautiful James can look with gravy smeared on his chin and roast potatoes puffing out his cheeks. 

James isn’t like them. The countless girls who try to vie for Sirius’ attention. James doesn’t pout his lips or slither up close to whisper in his ear. James bruises Sirius’ lips with heated kisses when no one is around. He breathes promises of pleasure against Sirius’ ear, all the while palming him expertly through his jeans.

Because he’s not like them.

He’s addictive. Like the Honeydukes chocolate he always eats. Sweet and rich and Sirius thinks that no one else will ever understand that James is so much more than they’ll ever know.

Evans gets close to James at times. It makes Sirius frown. It makes James smile, though. And so, he wars with himself, torn between giving in to the bitter emotion in his gut and the need to please James.

Lily isn’t awful. Sirius enjoys her quick wit and level-headedness. She doesn’t simper up to James like the other girls. She doesn’t give him much attention, really, – at least not the type of attention James so avidly seeks.

Remus gets along with her. Peter, even. And Peter often gets flustered around pretty girls to the point of incoherency.

But Sirius struggles to see her as anything but a threat.

They aren’t dating – Lily and James. They aren’t even friends really. Yet, Sirius knows that he isn’t dating James either. What they have isn’t a relationship. Not really.

He notices the nights when James doesn’t come to him, seeking kisses and the heat of Sirius’ body to warm his desire. They become fewer. Oh, but when James does crawl into bed with him, he’s just as wanton, just as needful and breathless and he does all the right things. He wraps his arms around Sirius’ neck and holds him close, whispers _yeses_ and _mores_ and begs in a desperate, lustful voice that does wicked things to Sirius’ stomach and chest.

He comes just as beautifully as he ever does, with his mouth open and the pale column of his neck bared, his eyes scrunched up, glasses awry on his nose, and his body moving in time with Sirius’, rutting against him, spilling over his own stomach and Sirius’ cock as they slide against one another.

Sirius can still make him laugh until he cries with mirth. That won’t ever change, Sirius thinks. It’d be impossible, because James laughs a lot, and Sirius knows what makes him lose it.

He still knows that James can look gorgeous with a mouthful of food, but now he notices Lily finds a reason to wipe away smears of mashed potato from James’ chin whenever she can, and he see, too, the pink heat that infuses James’ face at the casual intimacy.

He knows James is falling for her more each day. And, in some ways, he can understand why.

Lily is smart and beautiful. And she’s realising, quickly, that James is too.

Sirius knows he’s special to James. A Marauder and partner in crime, but he can feel the shift taking place between them, and he knows that’s all he is now.

He’s not the one who makes James’ body spark alive with desire. He doesn’t get to kiss him when he wants to, to catch his little noises of pleasure on his tongue and feel James pull him closer.

He isn’t the only one to have kissed James, now.

He quiets the snarl of possessiveness that rears up in his chest each time Lily leans in and silently asks James for a kiss. She kisses him now, but Sirius was his first. That, no one can take away.

He remembers what it was like, when they’d first kissed. The fumbling of his hands and James’ awkward laughter that was just a little too breathy and a bit shaky.

James had always kissed well. Sirius knew their first kiss was wonky and desperate, fuelled by the fire within their groins and hardly tactful. But he wouldn’t change it. Because James had grinned his lopsided smile after they’d broken apart, a glint of saliva left on the bow of his top lip, hazel eyes bright behind his glasses, and Sirius wanted him. Above anything else. He’d wanted James.

He knows the glossy-eyed look that Lily wears after slipping out from behind a tapestry all too well. He’s worn it himself numerous times. He longs for James on those occasions, or rather, he longs for his kisses. The mindless lazy ones. The rough, demanding, bruising ones. Lily has them all now, but she often only wants the chaste or romantic ones.

Sirius sometimes wants to tell her that James gives the best responses to the harder kisses. The ones that make his toes curl up and his pulse thrum in the hollow of his neck. But James doesn’t push Lily for those kisses. He gives her the ones she wants.

Sirius finds he’s pleased by this. He is the only one to understand that sometimes forceful kisses with nipping teeth and battling tongues is what James needs. When he’s studied too long and is grumpy and out of Honeydukes chocolate. Or when a prank has gone awry. Sirius feels smug knowing he is the only one to know what James craves on occasions like those, and in time, when he witnesses Lily shuffling out from behind a tapestry, lips kiss-swollen and eyes faraway, he begins not to envy her as much.

Soon, James stops coming to his bed of a night. Sirius sees the little glances James sometimes gives him, peeking looks that always give way to a soft blush whenever James realises he’s been caught out. Caught looking. It makes Sirius’ gut twist, as unpleasant as it feels, there’s always a leap of validation that takes away the ache in his stomach.

He likes the way James watches him. Sometimes when he’s too engrossed in it he nibbles his bottom lip and Sirius wonders what he’s thinking. Is he remembering the nights they spent in Sirius’ bed, tangled up in the sheets, trying to stay quiet and get off? Sirius remembers those nights all too well.

They sit in his memory, a guilty, bittersweet recollection when he pleasures himself. It’s all he has now. The echo of what it was like.

He often wishes he’d done more. Would James’ attention have wavered if Sirius had been the one to fully take his virginity? Would James have let him?

James had never been averse to Sirius taking the lead, in fact he always seemed to moan just a little bit louder the times Sirius had pinned his wrists above his head, took charge and command, and brought him off quickly and himself in the process.

So, Sirius believes James would have let him take him. Have him.

The first time Sirius allows his mind to ponder how it would have went he comes hard, and even after three more climaxes, he still wants more.

James never does anything by the half. He loves fully, that is true in bed as well, and Sirius knows James would have given himself over to him completely.

The regret of never realising he could pleasure James with more than just his hand or mouth or by rutting against him makes Sirius frustrated.

James might have stayed...

Lily becomes a firm fixture within their group, almost an honorary Marauder, despite her being inclined to frown at their troublemaking ways, that is.

Sirius finds that sex with random girls is a good time-waster. It’s fun enough. Sometimes he even finds himself dating one, for a little while, at least. James displays his irritation more when Sirius has a cute girl draped over his arm than when he’s not dallying with anyone.

He feels guilty about making James frown. The lost look in his hazel eyes normally makes Sirius question his morals.

The girls are nice, he even comes to care for a few of them, and it dulls the ache he feels when James is laughing at something Lily has said, or kissing away her scowl when he’s gotten himself in her bad books.

They are still close. Sirius doesn’t think he could ever not be close with James. They laugh about stupid things, eat Honeydukes sweets together, pull pranks, study and plan for their futures, but they never speak of what had once been between them.

It lingers in James’ touch when he’s overtired or befuddled by Firewhiskey and not quite as good at reining in his body in those moments, and Sirius wants, in those fleeting snatches of time, to lean in and taste the crooked grin James always wears.

To taste Honeydukes chocolate, to feel the shift of lithe muscles under his hands – not firm breasts or curvy hips – because, as good as they are, they never truly match up to James’ lean figure. But Sirius makes do. And he lets the moments pass, every time, so that they can pretend like there isn’t anything between them anymore.

Perhaps if they keep it up, starve themselves of one another’s touch, place some distance between each other, perhaps then they’ll come to believe, truly believe, that nothing ever existed like that between them in the first place.

Sirius plays pretend.

He pretends he doesn’t ache for James, he pretends the brief, firm hugs after Quidditch matches are enough, that he doesn’t want to linger against James and smell the sweat of an arduous match, sun-warmed grass, and the spicy, sweet scent that is purely James.

He pretends that his body doesn’t stir when his mind remembers the past. He pretends that he doesn’t notice James’ subtle glances, his inevitable blush afterward, or his bottom lip fixed between his teeth.

Just the same as James pretends that Sirius is his best mate, not anything more. Pretends to treat Sirius the same as Remus and Peter, and pretends he doesn’t stand a little closer to Sirius then the others, or sit next to him at every meal, so close their elbows knock.

Sirius knows James’ body heats at the sound of his voice. His own flushes hot at the sight of James’ askew grin. But they pretend it’s nothing, until it becomes just that.

 Until they play their parts without fumbling and fool everyone, including themselves.


End file.
